Author
Topic: this is not a place in my head | true [victorian au] (Read 173 times)

Downpour skittered across the slate roof, rain that fell and just kept coming. Thijs shook the water out of his hair as he entered through the front door, and thunder rolled dull across a distant horizon when he closed it.

It was warm inside-- and Thijs quickly shucked off his sodden jacket, and draped it over a nearby chair. His shirt was soaked through, and he debated taking it off as well, but this quickly vanished when he spotted the room's sole occupant sitting upright in bed.

"Miss Virtue," he said, his lips twisted soft around the shape of her name, "There you are."

He approached her, and sat himself down across her. His fingers, though soaked and frozen from the cold, sparked up with a gentle heat as soon as they touched hers. He drew them away in the next moment.

"I heard from Master Williams that you were unwell," he said, and averted his eyes, "I know it's not exactly proper for us to be alone, but I wanted to see you."

She had come to the hunting cabin to write but had only succeeded in catching a cold.

In her sheets, she shifted uncomfortably, fussing over the same line of dialogue that had plagued her for the last half hour. It was an annoyance rivaled only by the persistent running of her nose. Her father would have said it was what happened when a woman tried to take on the intellectual work of a man. She would have said it was the abysmal weather here in their country seat. She would have also said exactly where he could take his own intellectual work.

When the door opened, she didn’t jump. Williams said he’d be sending one of the kitchen girls along with bone broth later, and Virtue Hir was not the jumping sort, besides. She didn’t, either, when someone who was very much not the kitchen girl sat down across from where she had propped herself, in her chemise and bare-shouldered and surrounded by dozens of neatly-numbered pages, in bed. His touch was uncommonly warm and not entirely welcome.

“Mr. Märchen.”

Never Thijs, except for when he was. Her voice was wispier than usual. Putting down her pencil, she folded her hands in her lap and fitted him with a queer, quirked-eyebrow expression.

“And so here I am. Tell me, what is so important to call so late in the evening?”